It's the Mondrian cakes that made her famous, but the distinctive primary-colored pastry is by no means the only modern art dessert in Caitlin Freeman's baking arsenal. Over the years, the pastry chef behind the Blue Bottle Cafe at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art has done Robert Mapplethorpe bananas, Andy Warhol gelees and scores of other artistic sweets, all inspired by SFMoMA exhibits.

So it's with a certain sense of culinary relief that we can tell you that while the museum may be shutting down this summer for a massive expansion project, you needn't be Mondrian cake-deprived until 2016. Not only is Freeman reprising her signature edible graphic at New York's MOMA later this month, you'll find DIY instructions in her new cookbook, "Modern Art Desserts" (Ten Speed Press, $25, 216 pages).

James and Caitlin Freeman at the Blue Bottle cafe at SFMOMA. (Clay McLachlan)

Naturally, we had questions.

Q You're the sweet side of Blue Bottle Coffee. How did you wind up making edible homages to artists?

A Back in college, I was an art student, and fell in love with the painter Wayne Thiebaud. I got sucked into work life in San Francisco, having nothing to do with art. I saw the 2000 retrospective of Thiebaud's work and made a big declaration: that what I was going to do with my life was make art with cakes. And learn to make cakes.

Q You ended up with a patisserie of your own, the now-famous Miette. How did you land at the museum?

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A SF MoMA called my husband (Blue Bottle founder James Freeman) and said, "Hey, we have this new cafe space, would you be interested in being the coffee shop up there?" We did a hard hat tour space and kind of during the middle of it, I thought, "My god, this building was where I first saw the first Thiebaud painting, 'Display Cakes' back in college. We're going to have a cafe, and I'm totally going to make Thiebaud cakes here."

Q Mondrian, Mapplethorpe -- how do you and your pastry colleagues, Leah Rosenberg and Tess Wilson, decide which art works deserve something delicious?

A We only serve things that are on display in the museum, so they're constantly changing, but the Mondrians never come down. We start to get an idea of what's going on with the show, talk to the curators. There's a lot of brainstorming -- and often the most ridiculous thing is super awesome. We're in this insane position, where we get to come up with preposterous things, and people are delighted by it. It has to be clever, and it has to be delicious. It's not just an art project up there. We have to have delicious food.

Q What's the best part of this for you?

Modern Art Desserts by Caitlin Freeman (Contributed)

A It's so thrilling to be in this place I admired so much. As a failed artist, I see this as this incredibly exciting way to gallivant around the museum, participating.

Q So what will you do while the museum is closed?

A A pop-up at MOMA in New York, May 14 to May 21. We're starting with Mondrian cakes and Thiebaud cakes, and there's a great Andy Warhol series in their cafe -- incredible, they have Andy Warhol in their cafe! -- so we'll modify our Warhol jello to work with their pieces. Blue Bottle always has stuff in the works, and we started Modernartdesserts.com to archive all the projects that aren't in the book.

With life and my work, not knowing (the future) is pretty great. I can't help but think amazing things are out there.